Trust and Power

Niklas Luhmann, Michael King, Christian Morgner, Howard Davis, John Raffan, Kathryn Rooney

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781509519484
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this important book, Niklas Luhmann uses his powers as an analyst of the social system to examine two of the most important concepts which hold that system together and allow it to evolve: trust and power. He criticises those theoretical accounts whose roots lie in what he refers to as ideologies – accounts which use implicit beliefs in particular conceptions of human nature to explain and predict social action in a one-dimensional way. Theories of rational choice and moralistic explanations are taken to task, as are the theories of both Marx and Habermas. Luhmann's unique scientific sociology underpins every page and enables him to highlight the potential shortcomings of these narrative approaches. Underlying this approach is the idea that ideologically-based social theory, whether critical or conservative, is unable to do justice to the complexities existing within the parameters of social systems, individuals, and the interactions between them. He aims to show instead how only a painstaking systems analysis can capture these intricacies. Although written over 40 years ago, Luhmann's complex vision of the operations of trust and power provides a wealth of insights of considerable value to scholars and students grappling with contemporary social and economic problems. The editors' introduction to this new edition and the significant revisions they have made to the translation will help to reveal the richness and clarity of this vision and its relevance to the ways that trust and power operate in today's society.

Part I
TRUST

Preface

There is a question worth serious consideration of whether it is advisable for sociologists to employ terms and concepts taken from daily usage of the traditional world of ethical ideas. The advantages and disadvantages of such a moral intrusion into sociological concepts appear to balance each other, but they can be presented as appearing almost separate from one another. If one remains at the level of critical demolition and surprising presentation of the familiar in unfamiliar ways or of unmasking ideological beliefs through providing causal explanation or evidence of hidden side-effects, then the disadvantages predominate. The identity of terms so employed is misused in order to discredit their invoked meaning horizon. In the current intellectual climate, this is an easy trick to perform – perhaps too easy, in that sociology could learn something from this, and construct some theoretical application out of it. If, on the other hand, sociology could go beyond this level and seek to establish its intellectual position in positive terms by formulating a theory of its own, and then enter a dialogue with the everyday understanding of the social world and its formation of this understanding through ethics, then the advantages of a certain common vocabulary might well outweigh its disadvantages. It is in this sense that the following reflections on the notion of trust are aimed at a contribution to sociological theory.

Work on this manuscript was undertaken at the Institute for Social Research, University of Münster in Dortmund, when it struck me rather forcibly that statements about trust are today still very far removed from being substantiated by methodologically valid means. Detailed discussions with Dr H.-J. Knebel and Dr F. X. Kaufmann have been most stimulating and have strengthened me in the view that this gulf between theory and empirical work is inevitable but not unbridgeable.

Niklas Luhmann Dortmund, Winter 1967/8

1
Defining the Problem: Social Complexity

Trust, in the broadest sense of confidence (Zutrauen) in one’s expectations, is a basic fact of social life. In many situations, of course, a person can choose in certain respects whether or not to bestow trust. But a complete absence of trust would prevent him or her from even getting up in the morning. He would be prey to a vague sense of dread, to paralyzing fears. He would not even be capable of formulating definite distrust and making that a basis for precautionary measures, since this would presuppose that he trusts in other ways. Anything and everything would be possible. Such abrupt confrontation with the complexity of the world at its most extreme is beyond human endurance.

This point of departure can be regarded as a datum, an incontrovertibly true statement. We put our trust in the self-evident matter-of-fact ‘nature’ of the world and of human nature¹ every day. At this most basic level, confidence is a natural feature of the world, part and parcel of the horizon of our daily lives, but it is not an intentional (and hence variable) component of experience.

Secondly, the necessity of trust can be regarded as the correct and appropriate starting point for the derivation of rules for proper conduct. If chaos and paralyzing fear are the only alternatives to trust, it follows that man by nature has to bestow trust, even though this is not done blindly and only in certain situations.² By this method one arrives at ethical maxims or natural-law principles which are inherently reversible and of questionable value.

A third possibility is to think about and use one’s imagination to portray the anxieties of an existence without trust. By this means one can transcend the everyday world, and provide a distanced interpretation of it through the philosophical tradition. The prospect of this borderline situation has held great fascination for psychologists and doctors,³ not to mention eminent thinkers of the present day. In fact, although spurious conceptions have their uses and can be instructive, they nonetheless remain spurious.

Functionalism in psychology, and in the social sciences generally, approximates to this kind of existential philosophical approach in a number of different ways – particularly through its rejection of substantive principles. This is why it has to be so careful about keeping clear of such approaches,⁴ for functionalism is characterized by distinctive presuppositions and theoretical perspectives. Since such distinctiveness is controversial⁵ we must attend to its basic features⁶ before looking at the function of trust.

Functional analysis is not a matter of establishing connections between established reasons or reliable knowledge in order to generate secondary knowledge; it is concerned ultimately with identifying problems and their solution. The method is therefore neither deductive nor inductive but heuristic in a rather special sense. Problems are posed in terms of the maintenance of stability of action systems – or, more abstractly, of identity in the real world. Moreover, continuity, and likewise identity, are no longer seen as a matter of essence or invariance but instead as a relation between variable orders, namely between system and environment. From this perspective, problems, as well as their solutions, take on their meaning not from some assumed invariable, essential, property but from particular positions in a framework of alternative possibilities. The ‘nature’ of this or that identity is defined by the conditions under which it might be replaced by another. Given this approach, the process of research in functional analysis is open to all kinds of possibilities. Its potential for envisaging complexity appears boundless, and a number of different features point to the very great capacity for dealing with complexity from all aspects, a capacity not to be found in the everyday and traditional understanding of the functional method.⁷

Complexity, and the capacity for dealing with it, however, is not just the hidden motive, the unifying purpose behind the whole conceptual orientation of the functional method; it is at the same time the most fundamental substantive problem for functional research. It is only from the standpoint of its uttermost complexity that it is worthwhile attacking the problem of the world as a whole, the universal horizon of all human experience.⁸ Since it has no boundaries, the world is not a system. There being nothing external to it, it cannot be threatened. Even radical changes in its form of energy can be interpreted only as events within the world. The world poses a problem only in relation to the existence of true and consistent identities, due to its spatial and temporal complexity and due to its superabundance of realities and possibilities, which make it virtually impossible for stable expectations to emerge. This inhibits successful adaptation to the world by the individual. From its interior the world appears as unmanageable complexity, and this is the aspect of the problem that it presents for systems which seek to maintain themselves in the world.

A second advantage of taking complexity as a fundamental problem is that its high degree of abstraction and universality blurs the categorical distinction between psychic and social systems and thus the difference between psychological and sociological theory. We know, from our own experience as well as from scientific research, that readiness to show trust is dependent on the systemic structure of psychic systems as measured, for example, on the F-Scale.⁹

But we can be equally sure that a purely psychological explanation will be inadequate. Far from the psychological point of view, completely different grounds can motivate the offering or refusal of trust.¹⁰ And, in any case, trust is a social relationship which is subject as such to its own rules. Trust occurs within a framework of interaction which is influenced by both psychic and social systems, and cannot be exclusively associated with either. This is why we must take refuge in a more general theoretical language, where concepts such as system, environment, function and complexity are formulated at such a high level of abstraction as to lend themselves to psychological as well as sociological interpretation. Talcott Parsons sought a similar way out, although in the direction of a very different, more definitely structural, theory of a general ‘action system’.¹¹

The concept of complexity has therefore to be defined in very abstract terms. This can be done straightforwardly in terms of a distinction between system and environment and in terms of a system’s potential for actualization. The concept then signifies a number of possibilities which are opened up through system formation.¹² It implies that the conditions (and hence boundaries) of possibility can be specified, that the world becomes constituted after this fashion and also that it contains more possibilities than can be realized, so that in this sense it has an ‘open’ structure. From one angle this relationship between world and system can be seen as a problem of overload and of a constantly threatened stability. This, in fact, is the approach of functionalist systems theory. From the opposite perspective, the same situation appears as a ‘higher’ order, constructed by reducing complexity through system building, which renders the problem one of selection. This latter approach is that of cybernetic systems theory.

The world is overwhelmingly complex for every kind of real system, whether it consists of physical or biological units, of rocks, plants or animals. Its possibilities exceed those to which the receiving system has the capacity to respond. A system locates itself in a selectively constituted ‘environment’ and will disintegrate in the case of disjunction between environment and ‘world’. Human beings, however, and they alone in this, are conscious of the world’s complexity and therefore of the possibility of selecting their environment – something which poses fundamental questions of self-preservation. Humankind has the capacity to comprehend the world, can see possibilities, can realize its own ignorance, and can perceive itself as one who must make decisions. Both this outline plot of the world and individual awareness are integral to the structure of the individual’s own system and a basis of conduct, for he comes to experience other human beings, who, for their part, are simultaneously experiencing what for him is merely a possibility, are mediating the world for him, and are treating him as an object. This makes it possible for him to identify himself – by assuming their point of view.

Opening up the world in this way, and identifying meaning and selfhood in the world, are possible, therefore, only because we invoke a whole new dimension of complexity – the subjective ‘I-ness’ of other human beings w...